


Don't Look Into My Eyes

by gakkubi



Category: Naruto
Genre: Akatsuki - Freeform, Ame Orphans, Amegakure, Angst, Character Study, F/M, Gen, it has a little bit of fluff but it's basically just sad lmao, obito is mentioned only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gakkubi/pseuds/gakkubi
Summary: As Nagato takes his first steps as the Divine Path of Pain, Konan can't help but feel deep in her soul Yahiko would hate them for what they are doing to him.
Relationships: Konan & Nagato | Pain, Konan & Nagato | Pain & Yahiko, Konan/Yahiko (Naruto)
Kudos: 16





	Don't Look Into My Eyes

_It’s okay now. We have each other._

The sound of thunders woke up Konan from a troubled dream. A feeling of confusion hit her as she looked around and couldn’t recognize where she was; that place where she had felt so happy and safe now appeared to be so empty and gloomy. It was as if she was suddenly somewhere else, living things she had lived so long ago. She sat on her bed, disoriented, and looked into the mirror to find a heartbroken child staring back at her.

Memories she hadn't thought about for so long fell upon her like the rain. So many years ago, when her family was murdered and she wandered around the city in search of food and shelter, looking inside the windows of abandoned houses and seeing nothing but her reflection in the darkness; sad, tired and lost. It call came back feeling so painfully real.

And now, once again, she was in the darkness staring at her own reflection, hearing the echo of a lonely life she thought she had left behind. The only light in her room came from her door, opened slightly by the wind of Amegakure’s ever so rainy days. Konan felt completely devoid of any desire; she didn’t want to move a limb, take a single breath, think any thoughts. She wasn’t even sure whether she was alive as her reflection turned into meaningless colors she couldn’t recognize.

The sound of someone walking across the corridor casted a shadow upon the wall, framing the shape of the only person able to break her free from the nothingness that buried her alive.

Yahiko.

His projected figure stopped and looked timidly into her bedroom. They studied each other as if they could see into the other’s eyes, but neither of them emerged from the darkness separating them. How could this dark, featureless silhouette look so deep into her soul, even without a face, even without eyes?

Yahiko and Konan found each other when they were children, when they didn’t have enough words to explain and understand what they felt. Back then, they only found comfort. They could always understand each other in the silence, and find safety in the dark.

But when she could almost hear Yahiko begin to say something, he was gone.

And it felt once again like when she was a child and her house ran out of food; she didn’t want to leave, but she had no choice.

A few days before, the corridors of Akatsuki’s headquarters were filled with voices and the flapping wings of carrier pigeons. Now, the sound of Amagakure’s rain felt louder than ever, like the thunders were trying to fill the deafening silence left behind.

Konan arrived in the conference room to find Yahiko looking himself in the mirror.

His cape was open, and he studied himself; his hand caressing his own face, his neck, all the way to his chest, touching the stitches that sealed the wound above his heart.

“I didn’t think it would be this awful”, Yahiko said, taking his eyes from his own reflection to look back at her.

His voice...

Seeing Nagato’s eyes felt like being stabbed into the stomach. Stabbed, just like Yahiko had been. For a moment, she forgot. She had forgotten it all.

Of course she did; she didn’t know what life was like without him. Yahiko was her family; they survived because they found each other. Because they kept each other from freezing to death in the cold nights they slept in the streets, because they supported each other when they couldn’t walk from starvation, because they helped each other when they stole food, because they dreamed together of better days. For so long his eyes were the only eyes she could find safety in.

And now he, who was the first certainty in her life, was gone.

“Are you okay?”

But Nagato was like that, too. He appeared in their lives not so long after that. He was someone with whom she could have entire conversations just by exchanging looks. He was quiet like she was. It was always Yahiko’s role to fill the silence with his talking and motivational speeches. Maybe that’s why he was always up for discourse; he knew they were often in need of his optimistic mood lifts.

How could having the two people she loved the most turn into one be like witnessing the birth of a monster? As she recovered her memory, Konan felt a sudden wave of digust and sickness run up her throat, like all her organs collapsed into a hollow inside her body.

“Konan. What is it?”

She couldn’t bring herself to answer. She was horrified. She was so horrified and yet she couldn’t look away from Yahiko’s horribly deformed face, pierced all over with the black metals that made him look like he was alive.

The urge to cry strangled her throat but she couldn’t shed a tear to comfort herself. She couldn’t do anything, frozen by the horrible sight in front of her.

But why? She had been by Yahiko’s side all the time. All while Madara stabbed his body with the chakra receptors, while he stitched the open wound in his chest. She had seen Yahiko rise from the dead and take his first faulty steps as Nagato learned to inhabit his body.

Konan even held him on her arms when he took his last breath.

Then why did she expect to see his brown eyes once again when he turned around?

“I know...” Yahiko sighed, replying to her silence. “It’s so strange. When I look in the mirror I’m waiting for him to talk to me."

“Nagato”, she murmured as her voice died out, “what are you doing?”

Yahiko looked down and, raising his arm like it weighted so much more than he could handle, closed his cape and walked away towards the balcony. Every uneven step he took was like a punch in the gut, one strike after the other without mercy - all the memories she had of him being unforgivingly tainted by the inhumane atrocity that spoke to her with his voice.

“I’m trying to get used to it. Making myself accept that his body is now my own.”

“This is a mistake.”

Yahiko stopped abruptly and turned around.

But this time, the person who looked at her was not him, because Yahiko never glared at her with such a cold expression; and to be fair, neither did Nagato.

“We agreed upon this. You were there the whole time. Why are you having second thoughts now? What changed?”

“I don’t know” Konan said. “I don’t know! Maybe I wasn’t thinking… I don’t think we thought this through well enough with Madara around. I don’t t-”

“This was not Madara’s idea. It was _ours._ ”

“I wanted him back, Nagato!... Not for you to try to become him.”

Konan stared at him like they were worlds apart. Nagato was her brother, they shared a life together, and yet suddenly it felt like they couldn’t recognize each other.

“I can’t talk to you like this. I’m coming up to see you.”

“ _This_ is me!” 

Konan felt a chill ran down her spine hearing Yahiko's voice roaring - a sound she had never heard before. Nagato never spoke like this with her, and even when Yahiko raised his voice with annoyance, it was never so cold. The person in front of held a hatred she never saw in neither of them.

“This is a cursed world. Only those who are born with power and in the right place are blessed with a good life. The three of us were doomed right from the start! This whole country is cursed unless we change the rules of this world, and this is Divine Path. Don’t you remember Yahiko wanted to be god?”

_I will become the god of this world!_

“Not like this.”

Yahiko closed his eyes and raised his hands facing up the sky.

“Yahiko’s power was one no one else had, more powerful than my eyes, more powerful than Madara.” He opened his eyes, and Nagato’s rinnegan looked up to the rainy clouds like they were hurting him. “He with words alone saved you and me, created the Akatsuki, inspired dozens to follow his dream. And even so what he had was not enough.”

Konan could only watch him. _“Enough? ”_

“He was too kind. Talking would only work in a rational world, but this one is filled with selfishness. Madara was right.”

“Yahiko distrusted Madara from the start”, Konan gasped, marching towards him. “He would _hate_ us! Don’t you see we are betraying him?”

“We _aren’t_ betraying him! Yahiko tried to change the world through words and what happened? The world betrayed him. Murdered by the very people he tried to change. Ambushed in a stupid way, because we were children, because he had faith. Pain forces us to grow up, Konan, and it’s time!”

Hearing Nagato’s wounded words coming out so clearly from Yahiko’s lips was terrorizing; that was him, that was really him. Konan tried but couldn’t look away from his eyes - wide open and devoid of emotion, Yahiko looked much more like a deadly reptille than he looked like a human; it was the scariest thing she ever saw, and she just wanted to run away. And yet, she endured the monster’s relentless glare.

“Yahiko gave his life so we could live, and I _won’t_ die walking the same path that got him killed.”

Nagato turned around and moved outside towards the end of the statue’s tongue, raising his arm and hands up to the sky, as if he wanted to hug the rain.

Konan watched him, finally able to breath after he spared her of his horrifying sight. The weather fell harder upon Yahiko, his outline was blurred by the heavy rain, and the wind carried her vision to another time not so long before that day - to a morning where she found him just like this, getting soaked by the rain, with his arms open to the world.

“It’s still crying... the country just keeps on bearing the pain.”

The wetness made his arm’s bandages loosen up, and they fell one by one.

“When I was a kid I used to think the rain would stop if I changed the world.”

Konan smiled. Yahiko was always so light-spirited she did sometimes forget how serious and introspective he could be. He had so much faith in his dream, and the light in his face so much brighter than hers and Nagato’s ever were; like the hope he had in a better world healed the wounds of his broken childhood, and in turn he would heal theirs as well.

“You are already changing the world” she said. “Everyday there’s new people who believe your dreams can become true.”

Yahiko lowered his hand, although they’d still face up to the sky.

“It’s funny to think that when I first decided I was going to save the country, it was only you and me. Looking back, I think I only survived because you were always by my side believing in me.”

“You know I’ll always be here.”

Konan expected him to turn around and smile, but he didn’t.

“Promise me you will do the same for Nagato no matter what happens.”

Konan felt her heart sink into her body.

“You know I would. Why are you asking this?”

“Because it hurts to grow up and find out I’m not who I wanted to be.”

He turned around and gazed at her, and then looked away again.

“I wasn’t born for this. Maybe I’m good to be Akatsuki’s leader for now, but that’s now how we are going to achieve peace. We need someone who’s actually strong, who has the courage to make the hard choices” he said. “I’m not. I’m afraid.”

“Yahiko...? You’re the bravest person I know” Konan said, gasping in disbilief of what she was hearing.

“It was good while it lasted.... believing we could go on like this without having to kill anyone, but it’s just not true. I’m sick of lying to myself” he sighed, holding his own hands and looking at them like they were a friend who failed him. “And I can’t do it. I’m still trembling after all this time. It was just one person who attacked me and yet this feeling _just won’t_ just let go of me.”

“What are you saying?”

“I won’t lead Akatsuki for too long if I can’t bring myself to do something like this. Certainly I won’t be god”, he chuckled hurtfully. “I’ve already accepted that.”

“You feel like this because you’re not a murderer!”

“I feel this because it’s the truth. I don’t have any outstanding power. I’m not even talking about Nagato’s eyes; I know how much you hold back when we train together. You both are so much more powerful than I am.”

Konan was alarmed, she could hardly recognize Yahiko talking like this. “Power is not everything.”

“Oh, I know” he sighed. “I know my ideas will live on no matter what happens, as long as Akatsuki and you are alive.”

Konan walked to him and grabbed his arm angrily. When Yahiko looked at her, he saw her eyes full of tears and distress.

“Don’t talk like you are going to die!”, she cried, “why are you doing this?”

“I’m Akatsuki’s leader now, but it’s greater than me. I’m a tool to open the path for you.”

“You’re a _tool?”_ , exasperated. Not even her incredulous tone changed his expression; he just gazed at her with a frightening seriousness. It almost scared her how much he believed in his ideals. “Don’t talk like we could just discard you. You’re not replaceable.”

“I’m prepared to be.”

“Don’t you realize? You’re not replaceable to _me._ ”

Konan held his arm so strongly she could almost hurt him. Yahiko had grown to become so different from the boy he used to be. It felt like yesterday he wanted to become powerful and divine, and now, to see him making all sorts of backup plans... that’s why he was the leader, after all. He would always put everyone else first.

“Quit planning your own death. We are not going to let you die. You are our leader and we believe in you, _I_ believe in you, I always did. Talking like this, you break my heart!” she gasped. “Your vision and kindness are just two of the reasons I love you, so don’t make me hate you for it.”

Yahiko looked at her stunned. In awe of herself for scolding him so angrily, she quickly let his arm go - but his hand reached for hers before she could move away from him.

“You love me?” he inquired with an astonished tenderness. “I thought you didn’t have time for relationships.”

“You really are too busy with Akatsuki to pay attention to anything else” she shook her head and chuckled. “It is really fun to kiss and pretend it didn’t happen, but now it’s time to grow up, don’t you think?”

Yahiko looked at their hands and smiled. His eyes had both warmth and melancholy, but he sighed like we was relieved. “Yes… I guess I have always been so focused on making sure we would survive, but it’s pointless if we don’t enjoy the life we are fighting for.”

His soft smile was replaced by a bold expression, the same one he had ever since he was a boy, one of the many demeanors he emulated from Jiraiya; and whenever he looked at her with his face so bright and unafraid, she felt her soul fill with energy. Everything seemed so alive and achievable around him.

“And _by the way_ ” he continued boastfully, “I know for a fact anyone could tell I was in love with you, so don’t come and say that I was too busy. I’m not hard to read like you are, Konan. Nagato even told me there was gossip you rejected me.”

She blushed. “I can’t imagine anyone taking their time to talk about us.”

“Oh, I know, I know... It was just the three of us for so long we didn’t really have room for gossip. So I guess, as weird as it sounds, when I think there are people laughing at the idea of you dumping me, it makes me happy” Yahiko smiled. “But I also know some of them have bets that we are a couple. Can you believe? They even questioned Nagato if we were together in secret.”

They laughed at the absurdity of it and how much it all had changed. His bold look gave room to the caring warmth his brown eyes were filled. “But then, I guess we have always been together and just didn't tell each other.”

For so many years they stood side by side in the rain, and every single time she was thankful for it.

“Konan?”

Yahiko’s voice guided her eyes back to him; she found herself clenching his arm, but she couldn’t find his eyes. Instead, Nagato’s eyes looked worryingly at her.

“You're crying.”

Konan could only look at the person in front of her.

“I’m sorry. I forgot... I forgot that you see him when you talk to me.”

She started to recognize Nagato inside the skin of Yahiko - and his suffering, as vivid as hers, boiling under his featureless expression. It was too much for her heart. She was so tired of everything. Hadn’t they gone through enough pain already? Were they really doomed from the start?

What right did they have to force Yahiko to kill himself?

“Would he want this?”

Konan realized the arm she held was stone cold and let go.

As it all came down to her, she embraced the truth of what happened, like so many times she accepted being soaked by the rain. Konan wouldn't ever be able to look at the person in front of her and not see Yahiko before anything else - but as she gazed away from him and laid her eyes upon the city of Amegakure, it was like something inside of her had been fundamentally broken.

She was so sick of seeing dreams shatter like glass windows during the war. And unlike all the other times the world showed her it was a place more cruel than she thought, now there was no one to make her believe bright days would come in the future.

“Even as a boy Yahiko knew saving this world would require a power no human could have" Konan said, as she finally understood. "We had everything taken from us, but we are not children anymore. This time, we won't allow. I’ve had enough."

Both stood together in silence as the country cried over them; the sun was just behind the clouds, and yet it wasn’t allowed to shine. Their whole lives they waited and begged in prayers, but it never came; and if brighter days weren't to come on their own, they should be created, because they weren’t ever going to be at the mercy of anyone else ever again. He contemplated her while she avoided her sight, but this time she had in her eyes an anger just as cold as his.

"The fulfillment of Yahiko's first dream; this is what Pain is."

He gazed upon Amegakure alongside her, and the rain stopped with the rise of a hand.

“Becoming God.”.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a long time since I last wrote anything, please forgive me if I overuse past perfect tense and feel free to call me out on it (it's just something I really like in the English language).  
> This was originally written to be a script for a doushinji but I got overly excited!  
> I hope you like it and are safe at home. :)


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